There’s a nice piece on Daniel Debouck and the Frank N. Meyer Memorial Medal on the SGRP website. Thanks to David Williams for the headsup.
Agriculture improves nutrition improves agriculture
[W]e know that if we can get better micronutrients and get better total nutrition into kids in particular, we know that we can save many, many, many lives, and we know that we can do that in a more cost-effective way. Similarly, we know having healthier populations can contribute to food production and improved economic outcomes that then lead to improved nutrition. So it works in both directions, and we’re committed to making that link a productive one.
That’s Rajiv Shah, head of USAID, in an article in Nature Medicine, noted and linked by our friend Jess. Only one question remains: where you going to source the micronutrients, Rajiv?
“Luckily, there was a plant pathologist in center field”
Center field, for those of you unfamiliar with baseball argot, is somewhere in the centre of the field of dreams. And for Mat Kinase, the presence of a plant pathologist there was a perfect opportunity first to understand and then to explain an astonishing event:
We were only a few pitches into the first inning and everyone’s feet were completely orange. No one could figure out why the grass had been spray painted.
Can you figure it out? And why we are reporting it here?
Geoff Auricht RIP
Very sad to hear of the death of Geoff Auricht on 7 September. He’d been battling a brain tumor. Geoff had a passionate commitment to the conservation and use of pasture genetic resources, with a particular interest in Medicago. I’ll never forget the month I spent collecting forage germplasm in Sicily with him many years ago.
Pavlovsk complexities “simplified”
Our friends at the Global Crop Diversity Trust have just provided an update on what is happening at the Pavlovsk experiment Station. But don’t go to the Trust’s website, go straight to the Trust’s super-hip Facebook page, which is where you’ll end up anyway. 1